bars & plates & math, oh my

September means a new school year begins.
It's been a long time...decades...plural...=10 x too many years...since I've been in school.
It's been a decade...singular...plus or minus a couple years...since my girls have been in school.
I wouldn't think about the new school year at all were it not for the banter of parents with young ones and the teachers in the CrossFit community.

Those flutterings in stomachs that occur with kids and teachers alike on the first day of school are unavoidable.  Some feel the flutters everyday. That's got to be exhausting. And yet kids show up and work their way through whatever they're feeling. Hopefully they have safe places to 'let go' and breathe at the end of the day.

I never understood the whole "3 Rs" thing....reading/'riting/'rithmetic. WTF? Teaching the 3Rs that included 2 words NOT starting with R seemed counterproductive to the learning process. But then, I wasn't the greatest student.  By-The-Book teaching plans and memorization were not my friends.  I was and always have been a visual and hands-on student.  These methods of teaching were not yet invented when I was a kid. 
I was born in between perfect eras for me:
post-stone etching
pre-multi dimensional teaching

I enjoyed reading but was always slow...felt I had to  r e a d   e v e r y   w o r d  for my efforts to count.  I don't have a clue why I thought that! Thankfully I grew to learn that was not the case and enjoy it much more now.

I enjoyed 'riting but always felt my words did not delve deep enough to be of any meaning compared to some of my peers.  Thankfully, I learned to just say 'fuck it' and appreciate the fact that my 'Hallmark-ish' prose are really like any artful venture...for me first.  If you enjoy something and it's not hurting anyone, do it.  If my 'riting "hurts" you (your sensibilities), you won't be reading this anyway! :)

I hated 'rithmetic...sucked at it...except geometry, mercifully visual...and like many kids, never saw the future usefulness of the torture called "math".  I never learned to like it.

Then along came CrossFit with those barbells and plate loads and percentages and rep counts and time configurations.  Damned if I didn't start to appreciate being able to 'do math' in my head.  I was, after all, schooled during pre-calculator times.  We had to learn to 'do math' in our heads...or on our fingers when no one was watching.  Thankfully I have learned over the last three plus years as a CrossFitter to like 'rithmetic. 

Being completely realistic, CrossFit math is the hardest math of all to master.  All of us CFers are effing math geniuses!  We are able to do math even when all the blood has rushed from our brains to shore up our working muscles. Oh sure, sometimes we need four or five of us to figure out how much weight was actually loaded on a bar, or how many reps we could actually add together if one movement was a 4to1 count, or how many rounds of hell we just completed if we forgot to mark them during the WOD, but so what!  Team building is an important practice in life.
Plus, we love to test each other by pretending not to know how much the weight plates add up to so our buddy can solve that equation.  We really are quite good to each other.

true that!

CrossFit:
Flutterings are felt every day at the beginning of a WOD yet you continue to show up.
The CF gym is a safe place to lie in a heap on the floor post-WOD, 'let go' and breathe.
+
The 3 Rs
Reading: one must  r e a d  e v e r y  w o r d  of the daily WOD to get it right (Who knew my early reading method would come in handy!)
'Riting: jotting down results in your log book (I don't have to get all 'deep' when I write things down...especially if I put them on my MyWOD app on my phone :)  )
'Rithmetic: being able to figure out all sorts of equations in your head while staring at the weighted barbell (Thankfully this is a visual process, although I can and often do use my fingers. Being a grown up, I no longer care who sees me counting on them.  I can usually get to this answer by myself, but if I can't, I know I can rely on my fellow genius CrossFitters!)

The moral of this blog:
SCHOOL REALLY IS COOL...be a lifelong learner!